Identity Crisis
by Mb1350
Summary: A collection of one-shots concerning the different characters of Avatar at different points during and outside of the film. All film elements dialogue, situations, descriptions, etc. from screenplay available online.
1. Identity Crisis

**I've got several ideas for new chapters, some of which I'm already almost done with. This is going to be a series of individual one-shots exploring a character's thoughts, experiences, emotions, etc. at specific points in, before, or after the film. This chapter has been re-done as of 2/26/10, so be sure to re-read it if you haven't already!  
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**Identity Crisis**

Jake wheeled up to the desk: centered in front of him was a camera on a flexible mount, while to his right stood a monitor displaying what the camera was recording. He locked his wheels and glanced at the monitor as he adjusted it, trying to center himself in the shot.

Once he was pleased with the positioning he let out a sigh, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the monitor, face in hand. He watched the left side of his face being displayed for about a minute.

The Jake he sees in the monitor is by no means the same Jake from day one. His hair is getting long, messy, and slightly greasy; his beard is unkempt, and the color of his skin had all but left, leaving a pale façade that displayed the exhaustion he was experiencing. His shirt that once held taught over his toned upper body now lay loose over his neglected frame, and his eyes had lost that gung-ho sharpness and determination they had when he first came to Hell's Gate. _I need a shower…_ he thought.

He had his finger on the record button for a short amount of time while he considered how he would start off the log. He waited a beat, then began:

"It's been roughly two months since I came to the Avatar program, and I'm starting to see why they have a psych guy back at Hell's Gate. Everything used to be so clear-cut: here's my side, and here's theirs. You do as you're told and the shit will run upstream, past you, straight to the superiors. But now, things have been getting harder and harder to sort. Every day I'm questioning what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, how it's going to end. It's just… it's like I don't belong in half of my life. I'm calling into question my whole identity. Sure, I know **me**, the **me** the Na'vi speak about when they say 'I see you', but I don't think **I'm **in the right place. I don't belong. I mean, what am I doing here?" Jake looked around, motioning towards the interior of the shack. "I'm in a little metal box on a floating rock, for Christ's sake. The only true freedom I've had in years is out there, but I need to be in here to get to it."

"Everything is backwards now. Like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream. Out there I'm accepted; well, sort of, but I have a shot. I could have a life out there. In here, though, I'm just some broken grunt. Selfridge and Quaritch are taking advantage of my every move, Grace still thinks I'm a tool, and Norm is still a little pissed about me taking his place as ambassador. But the Omaticaya, they are helping me. Neytiri actually looks forward to mentoring me. And now, everything she teaches me just seems… pure, logical. I go back to Hell's Gate and feel like I'm some higher person. All of the greed and selfishness that runs the colony feels like dirt in the air, and all I can think about is getting back to the Omaticaya; to Neytiri." A lengthy pause follows.

"It seems like I'm the only one that feels this way, though. I'm the one getting so attached to them, and I don't even have a way to cope like the others do." Grace stirs awake in the bunk at the far side of the room, undetected by Jake.

"Norm and Trudy… well, they have their little fling going for them," Grace is now standing, the noise she made getting up masked by Jake speaking, "and Grace has her disgusting cigarette fix to calm her nerves. She and Norm are scientists. They can easily remove themselves emotionally. I can't do that."

"Talking to yourself, marine?" Grace said forcefully, trying to startle him. With the acoustics of the small room working in her favor, her voice seemed to punch in from every direction.

"Christ!" Jake shouted as he whirled his head and upper body around to face her. "You're up early."

"You know, if you need someone to talk to you can try me." Grace said, practically ignoring his attempt at small talk.

"Somehow I don't think that would help so much."

"But talking to yourself does?"

"You should try it some time." He countered. They stayed there for a few seconds in silence, maintaining eye contact.

"It's not removal: it's isolation." Grace said as she folded her arms.

"What?"

"Emotionally. We don't remove ourselves emotionally. We isolate our emotions from our work. The way you say it makes it seem like we're robots."

"I'm still not entirely convinced you aren't." He said with a small smile.

"You know what, fuck off." Grace said, throwing her hands up and walking away. "Don't convince yourself you're the only one who got attached to the Omaticaya." She called out as she walked away.

"Wait, wait." Jake said. He unlocked his wheels and pivoted to face her. "I'm just busting your chops."

"Too late Jarhead. Get ready, the Na'vi wake up early."

Bright, artificial light poured onto Jake as the link chamber swung open. He squinted his eyes as he propped himself up, his elbows sinking into the cushiony green bed he was lying in. He no longer resisted whenever someone tried to help him into his wheelchair as Grace and Norm did today. 'It's a trivial thing to get over-protective about' he began thinking a few weeks ago. Out here no one cared whether or not he needed someone's help.

"You're still losing weight. Here-" Grace said, handing him a microwave burrito. He took the now alien food and bit into it with the same enthusiasm as a child eating spinach.

"We made a kill today. We ate it. I know where _that_ meal came from." Said Jake.

"Other body. You need to take care of this body."

"Yeah yeah."

"Jake, I'm serious. You look like crap. You're burning too hard."

Jake plucked the lit cigarette from her mouth. "Get rid of this shit," he said, snuffing it out into the table for emphasis, "then you can lecture me."

"I'm telling you, as your boss and someone who might even consider being a friend someday, to take some down time."

"Not now. Tomorrow we leave for Iknimaya." He said as Grace walked over to the coffee maker.

"Yeah, you're gonna ride a banshee. Or die trying."

"Ikran, Grace. You should know that." Jake said with that same smirk from the morning. Grace shot him a death stare. He humored her and continued, "That's right, Grace. This is what I've been working for."

"And this is your check up from the neck up, Marine. You're getting in way too deep. Trust me, I learned the hard way." Those pictures. The ones she always looked at with such longing whenever she had the opportunity.

'Maybe I can finally find out some back story.' Jake thought.

"What did happen at the school?" Grace's head shot up as if she didn't expect the question. Yet, she was the one that tugged the conversation in that direction. 'She wants to tell.' He thought. Her eyes panned over to the photos: smiling children gathered around her kneeling Avatar. It was always a little odd jumping from Na'vi scale to human scale: in the picture they looked like any regular child, but in reality they would have been taller than most adult humans. _Would have been_.

Grace reflected on that moment: the day's lesson was an introduction to human technology. She thought they might have been wary of the camera (after all, once upon a time humans thought their own invention stole their souls) but they took right to it. They ran around, clicking photos of everything they could see, then looked at the screen on the back to see what they just captured. Over half of the photos had a stray blue finger covering some part of the lens during the shot, and they had not yet learned of focusing: How do you teach a child about things being blurry when they never have vision problems? And yet, those flawed pictures tell so much about the children that they're second only to meeting them in person. She sat down, holding her coffee in both hands.

"Neytiri's sister, Sylwanin, stopped coming to school. She was angry about the clear-cutting." She said after a short silence. She sipped the coffee. "Piece of crap machine can't make a good coffee." She muttered under her breath.

"One day, she and a couple of other young hunters came running in, all painted up, they'd set a bulldozer on fire, I guess they thought I could protect them." All of a sudden her voice shifted to a controlled tone, far too calm for the subject matter. She got up and took out a carton of milk. With one shaky hand she poured some into her coffee. "The troopers pursued them to the schoolhouse. They killed Sylwanin in the doorway. Right in front of Neytiri. Then shot the others. I got most of the kids out, before they shot me."

"Jesus."

"Yeah." Grace said. That calm monotone broke for a mere syllable, but it was all anyone needed to see that she was on the verge of tears. Still, she forced it down and continued. "A scientist stays objective -- we can not be ruled by emotion. But I poured ten years of my life into that school. They called me sa'atenuk. Mother." She turned around to face Jake. "That kind of pain reaches back through the link." She sat, and made direct eye contact with Jake. It was the kind of look Jake had received numerous times from numerous different superiors. It always preceded a key lesson to surviving the scenario. "It's not our world, Jake. And we can't stop what's coming. Learn what you can, but

don't get attached."

Jake nodded and propped his elbows onto the table, laying his chin into his clasped hands.

"Grace?"

"Yeah?" She traced the rim of her mug with her index finger.

"I'm sorry for what I said this morning. I… I had no idea."

"It's okay." Grace took a sip of coffee, this time a little more satisfied with the taste. "And if talking to the camera helps you out, go right ahead." She said. "Panzy." She tacked on, mimicking his I'm-pushing-your-buttons smirk.

Jake took a bite of his burrito. "Good talk."

Jake once again found himself at the desk facing the camera. He used the setup as a mirror once again, but this time was happier with what he saw. With his beard shaved and his body clean from yesterday's shower he looked better, although he still felt similar to yesterday. He glanced over his shoulder to ensure everyone was still asleep before he started his morning therapy.

"Grace told me about the school yesterday, about Sylwanin, Neytiri's sister. I can't help but think that nothing happened to those soldiers. They barged into the school and shot everyone, and for what reason? Because one of their Tonka Trucks were lit on fire? They probably came back to Hell's Gate and were honored as if they had done something good, as if they were heroes. What the hell kind of kindergarten logic is that? I realize that I'm against it now, but the worst is that three months ago I could have been one of the shooters; I would have been one of the soldiers that shot up the schoolhouse, that killed all of those children. That killed Neytiri's sister. That broken logic would have been all I needed to convince me to shoot _children_ for God's sake."

"That story is all I needed. Quaritch offered me my legs to betray the Omaticaya, but it's not enough anymore. If I ever have to walk away from the Na'vi, I'm going to-" He paused to glance around. It's still dark out, and everyone else is still asleep in his or her racks.

"I'm never leaving. I'll play his little game, but only so I can stay longer."

The glow from the monitor illuminated half his face in the darkness. He glanced back over to himself in the monitor, then hit the record button. He looked to make sure the little red circle was flashing on the monitor. He once made the mistake of recording an abnormally long 20-minute log only to find that the camera didn't start recording when he hit the button.

Grace had walked in on one of his soliloquies, but she had no idea just how long he's been doing them. He couldn't tell if anyone else was affected by it, but his adventures and fantastic experiences as an avatar now leave him depressed as a human. Verbalizing these feelings has been therapeutic for him, and sometimes he felt it was one of the only things helping him hang on.

"This is log 92. I've been making a habit of waking up early to get the morning video log out of the way before Augustine gets up. The more I do early the sooner I can get back to" He paused a beat to re-choose his words "work." He knew these logs went to Quaritch and couldn't afford them finding out how he felt about the Na'vi.

"Today we're going to train my Banshee and practice flying with Neytiri. After yesterday I think Tsu'Tey is starting to show signs of respect towards me. It's still far too much to ask for his approval, though. Everyone else seems to be coming around, although I'm pretty sure most of the time they're talking behind my back." He gave a small laugh. "It's like being the new kid in high school."

"That's all I have this morning. I'll be back tonight." Jake finished after checking the clock. He pushed the power button on the camera as Norm and Grace began waking up.

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**And that's chapter one. Please, feel free to critique my work, and remember that if you want me to do something similar to the next few chapters for a specific scene/original scenario please tell me! I'm always open to ideas and anxiously await the day when I open my inbox and find a fantastic idea to go on!**


	2. Graceful Transcendence

**I wanted to save this one for later, but it's the first chapter I finished and I felt it would be best to use this as a sign that I haven't abandoned this. **

Graceful Transcendence

"I need to take some samples…" Grace said weakly, a wane smile visible through the breathing mask. The towering Avatar form of Jake Sully cradled her vine-wrapped naked body and nimbly stepped across the mesh-like ground of the Well of Souls. Barely conscious, she felt like she was floating, swaying with Jake's every step and turn. _Am I dead?_ She thought. The floating sensation combined with the vibrant bioluminescent blue of the Well of Souls convinced her weakening mind that she was in a dream. She felt the presence of her physical body, but at the same time it felt distant. The enormous distance she felt seemed to be growing.

Somewhere in the distance she could feel herself being placed on her left side on the ground.

"_The Great Mother may choose to save all that she is… in __this__ body." _Grace heard Mo'at saying, her understanding of Na'vi still perfect despite her delirious state of mind. The voice was extremely muffled, as if she were hearing it from under water.

"Is that possible?" Jake asked, his voice barely audible to her.

_How did he understand that?_ Grace thought weakly. _Wait, did she even talk in Na'vi?_ It was as if all the syntaxical boundaries between languages had melted away, leaving only the meaning of the different words. Na'vi, English, French, Swiss, all of the languages she could understand seemed indistinguishable in her current state of mind. _Why is his voice so quiet compared to hers?_

"Possible, yes. She must pass through the Eye of Eywa—and return. But Jakesully—she is very weak." She felt like her mind was getting closer to her body. She could now feel the individual straw-like roots that blanket the ground on her bare skin, the warm tropical air of the forest, even the energy from the light of the forest.

"Hang on, they're gonna fix you up." Jake said, taking her hand in his. She squeezed weakly, about to take advantage of the slipping opportunity to use her body.

"I – always held back. But you gave them your heart. I'm proud of you, Jake." She paused, getting a better grasp of her body. "Help them. You do whatever it takes. You hear me?"

"I will."

The ceremony took a very long time. How long, Grace would never know. She felt like she had enough time to review every fact in her mind, and yet at the same time it felt like only a minute.

Then, a sensation she had never felt before. She felt like she was laying in a rising pool of feathers, their comforting texture gradually caressing more of her body from her left side to her right. The comforting sensation seemed to draw her mind back to her body, but her wounds were driving her away.

Eventually she could tell that the feathery feeling was actually thousands of hair-like roots bridging two consciousnesses: Eywa and her own. They are piercing my skin, but they don't hurt. They must be… thinner than the array of pain receptors on my skin. She couldn't help but analyze all she could, it's a habit she practiced every day as a scientist.

All of a sudden, she had lost her ties to her body. She was in limbo: a disembodied consciousness hovering in a nonexistent realm. There was no sensory input: she could no longer taste, see, feel, hear, or speak. There was only her mind and a… consciousness, awareness, mentality (Or lack thereof), a feeling of… freedom. Absolute freedom. Freedom from body, freedom of mind, of unbound comprehension. In this state anything one could possibly be taught would instantly be understood by her, her mind like that of a perfect logistician. She had the same mental power at her disposal as The Hulk had physical.

Something else was there, also. She didn't feel like she was in one place anymore. She felt like she was a part of each of the one hundred-plus Omaticaya that were present. With Eywa as a medium she felt a deep connection with every single entity attached to the network. Although the bond was strongest among the Omaticaya, it was not just the tribe exclusively: she felt presences from all over the planet. People praying, people seeking guidance, people making love, people grieving, everyone that shared a connection also shared a bond with herself. Unfortunately, after the war with the sky people, connections with Eywa were overwhelming dominated by grief and pain. Individually, she was too far away to feel what the foreign connections feel, but collectively it was enough to weigh herself down. The scale of the battle was finally coming into perspective for her. Compared to wars of the human's history this was a minor skirmish, but the pain was unbearable. If humans were capable of feeling this collective pain, there would be no more war, She thought.

All but two seemed alive: herself, and her Avatar.

She realized something beautiful: she felt every last of the chanting, swaying Omaticaya that had connected to the Well of Souls loving her. They truly, with every fiber of their being, wanted Eywa to allow her to become one of them. She knew the children from her school loved her and that those who knew the children knew that she meant well, but she had no idea that they absolutely desired for her to stay. From the perspective of the Na'vi she expressed pure, unbridled love, and from her own perspective she felt fully loved. It was a beautiful feeling that she hadn't felt since she left Earth for the Avatar program. If she were able to cry, she would have been bawling.

And then, as quickly she was snatched up from her human body, she was hurled back into it, but she had still maintained some connection with that presence. She snapped her eyes open and gasped, still gripping Jake's hand.

"I'm with her Jake — She's real." She said with tears forming in her eyes, still reeling from her mental experiences. She could feel her body dieing and her mind turned to Eywa, that omnipotent presence she was just a part of, for salvation. Eywa accepted her, and allowed her mind to become a part of itself.

Her consciousness had to pass through every inch of her nervous system, including the gaping bullet wound in her abdomen to get to Eywa. Oh my god! Her mind exclaimed. It felt like the nerves in her abdomen were being ripped apart like a sheet of Velcro, and her body began bleeding out of the wound again. Her mind traveled out through the root-cilia, chased by the blood seeping along their length. Her body exhaled, and it was all over.

"GRACE!" Shouted Jake. The bloodied roots fell away from her body as he looked on. He turned to her Avatar, but to no avail: The roots were falling away from its cold, vacant form.

Mo'at stopped the chant and walked over the Jake. "Her wounds were too great, there was not enough time. She is with Eywa now." She said, putting her hand on Jake's shoulder. Neytiri removed Grace's mask and closed her eyes.

She was gone.


	3. Guilt, Grief, and Life Decisions

**I took advantage of Norm's character type and ran with it like hell. With him I didn't have to stop and think if it seemed like him to think certain things, whereas characters like Quaritch and Selfridge are fairly limited and are going to be difficult to write for. I proofread this a few times, but there may always be a few mistakes. So now, chapter 3 of the Identity Crisis series:**

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Guilt, Grief, and Life Decisions

There was a lot on my mind, and I needed to go somewhere to sort everything out. Hell's Gate is too close-quarters, even with the few humans that stayed behind. The only real secluded areas one could find are in the forest, so I hopped into my link and walked out of the Omaticaya camp. I came to a rocky outcropping hanging over the forest and, deciding it was as good a place as any, sat down and stared out at the horizon. There was too much to sort through to admire the beautiful nighttime view.

Hometree was lost, and my own kind destroyed it. Countless tales tell of human greed driving the innocent into the cold grip of death, but nothing readies a person to witness its effects first-hand. Even a soldier is able to tell himself at the end of the day that those lost would have killed him if he hadn't killed them. This was different. It wasn't just warriors and murderers that died that day: women, children, the elderly, the wise, the dumb, the helpless, the fortunate and unfortunate alike; all were sent to Eywa far before their time. On that day, amidst the fire and nerve gas, the forest wept. Eywa shared in the combined sorrow of the hundreds of lives lost and displaced.

It's strange: back on Earth there were more people in most graduating high school classes than there were in the entire Omaticaya clan. And yet the loss seemed so much greater.

I had thought I was working for a good cause, although in hinds' sight there really was no other alternative outcome. 'Fate' had condemned Hometree to fall from the moment we discovered unobtainium on this moon. The only variable was whether or not there would be anyone inside it when it happened, and 'Fate' eliminated the more preferable state of that variable from the day the Na'vi discovered Hometree all those many thousands of years ago. The humans were never going to leave Hometree standing, and the Na'vi were never going to evacuate Hometree. How could I have missed this fact three and a half months ago? I had to have known this would happen on some level, even subconsciously. Does that make me a co-conspirator? Did I even deserve to have the option to stay on this planet?

The men and women pretend that they've moved on for the sake of their young. Every night as the children sleep, however, I can hear sobs, I can feel panic in the air, and I can see devastating loss on the faces of the great people that were forced into a nomadic lifestyle. They had been in Hometree since before humans started writing down history. The great-great-great ancestors of their great-great ancestors had slept in the same hammocks that the current generation had. You don't just move on from that kind of loss in a scant fifteen days, let alone combined with the massive loss of life.

Yes, I had picked up a rifle and rode into battle alongside the Omaticaya. Yes, I had shot at and probably killed my own people. There is a chance that the person sitting at the cafeteria table beside me two months ago was the one I had killed.

I wonder what he would have thought if someone were to tell that man that I, a 'limp-dicked scientist,' as they called us, would be his murderer.

Yes, I had gotten my Avatar nearly killed that day. But that's just it: _I_ didn't ride into battle that day. _I _played a video game in which I rode into battle. _I_ was lying safely in the shack behind friendly lines. The two-thousand-plus Na'vi that actually rode into battle were the ones that were brave, not me. Once I was out of the link, yes, I grabbed a gun and ran out, but the worst had already passed. Eywa had just sent the wildlife to land the finishing blow to the humans; I didn't even fire my gun.

Instead of acting long before the inevitable, I waited. There were several times I probably could have killed Selfridge. Some pure cyanide in his coffee, maybe a radioactive isotope slipped into his coat pocket and he would have died. There are hundreds of ways I could have killed that man when he occasionally walked into the labs with that pompous strut of his, like he was observing lab rats running through a maze, gradually making their way towards his twisted goal. There were countless chemicals that I could have 'miss-handled' or instruments I could have pointed the wrong way.

I wonder what would have happened if I injected him with the seed from which we grow the Avatars. I guess his immune system would have annihilated it, but it would have been interesting to find out. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that instead of taking action early on I had waited until the last minute, I had waited for the time when it was safe for me to act. I had waited for the choice to be made for me.

"You look sad." Came a voice from behind me. I turned to see Neytiri approaching.

"It's nothing." I replied.

"There is something." Neytiri said, sitting beside me. "Something ailing you."

"No… yes. It's just… What if I had acted sooner? I would be lying if I said I didn't have a feeling it would come to this." Lying. A concept the Na'vi didn't even have a word for before we came. It was a difficult concept to master. I wonder if in the short amount of time they learned about that word they had realized its full meaning.

"You acted for us. Your heart was in our favor, and that is all we can expect one to promise us."

"Yes, but all of this suffering, I can see the misery on people's faces, even when they try to hide it. I feel like I could have stopped it." I said, a lump forming in my throat.

"Not even Olo'eyktan can be expected to save all. Sorrow is a part of life; no single person causes it." She responded, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"Thanks." I responded. "I appreciate it." Even though I knew she was wrong, I was thankful she was trying to ease my pain. The Na'vi may not intentionally cause one another pain, but human history has proven that people cause others misery and sorrow constantly. The only time someone's pain isn't caused by another person is when it is from a natural disaster.

"Norm, you are one of us. Some day, you will be initiated into the Omaticaya people, and then you will be allowed to cross over through the eyes of Eywa."

"I would love to become a true member of the clan." I said, noticing a spreading across Neytiri's face. "But I'm not sure I will ever cross over."

"Why not?"

"I love the Omaticaya, I love the Na'vi, and I have no regrets about fighting alongside you in battle. But my love does not rest solely with the tribe. I love science, I love learning, and I love being able to gain knowledge." The smile faded from Neytiri, leaving a short silence in its wake. She doesn't understand; I need to do something big to try to get my point across.

"Would you abandon Tsahaylu for Jake?" I asked suddenly.

More silence.

"What do you mean?" Neytiri asked.

"Would you give up forming Tsahalyu with anything for Jake? No direhorses, no Ikran," I said, briefly considering whether or not I should go this far, "no Eywa."

Still more silence.

"It is a... difficult question." Neytiri said. She brought her legs in and hugged her knees to her chest.

"It is one I've been struggling to find an answer to." I replied. I think now she finally understood my position. "Maybe someday I will be ready to cross over. The way I feel right now, though, I'm not sure it will ever happen. But eventually I may tire of this lifestyle." I said. Better clarify what I mean by lifestyle: "Of jumping between two lives. Of spending my days as a Na'vi and my nights as a human."

"When that day comes, you are welcome with us." Neytiri said. She got up and began walking away. "Norm?"

"Yes?"

"Oel ngati kameie." "_I see you"_

"I see you, too." I responded. She walked a few paces away before:

"What if I choose to leave the Na'vi; not the humans?" I blurted out. It was a concern I have been pondering ever since I chose to stay behind. It felt good to finally let someone know of my struggle.

For Jake it was an easy decision. I don't like speaking ill of him, but in all truth he was a crippled jarhead who had reached a dead end in his life. His fate was sealed the moment he boarded the ship to Pandora. Me on the other hand, there could still be a future for me on Earth. Sure, I will not be going back tomorrow, a week from now, or a year from now, but some day, when relations improve, humans might get to return to the colony, and then I would have the opportunity to go back to Earth. Today, I would choose the Na'vi. But in a few years I can't be so sure.

"When that day comes, we will support your choice." Neytiri said, re-wording her previous statement. Despite her fairly simple English, she was still good with words and seemed to know how to talk someone through their problems.

"Neytiri?"

"Yes?"

"I'm really happy for you and Jake."

"Thank you, Norm." She said. "I'm… sorry for you and Trudy." Neytiri responded solemnly. It was a response I had not anticipated.

Trudy and I had developed an… active relationship since we were assigned to each other. Don't get me wrong; it wasn't just a sexual attraction. We both had feelings for each other, and those feelings grew as Jake was pursuing Neytiri through the forest. Personally I still don't get what she saw in me, but she saw something, and I saw something in her. It was a feeling I never wanted to let go of.

Then the battle came. She was so heroic, going up against the Dragon with just her Samson. It was a fight she had no chance of coming out of alive, and yet she flew without hesitation at the aircraft.

I heard her last words: "Norm, I love you." She said it with such dignity, too much for a woman like her to say to a scientist like me. I watched as her Samson leapt up from underneath the Dragon and sheared off the cockpit, exploding into little pieces. I watched her Samson fall, a burning heap of metal, to the forest bellow.

I had recovered surprisingly quickly from her death. Just fifteen days and I was already caring more about the condition of the clan than how I was coping. I guess deep down inside I expected her to stroll out of the crumpled cockpit, leisurely push aside the underbrush of the forest, and walk up to me at any second, her aviators covering her eyes and a wad of gum in her mouth. She just seemed indestructible like that.

But Neytiri's words ripped the wound wide open. 'I'm sorry for you and Trudy.' It was a finalizing statement: she was sorry for me because Trudy is never coming back. She didn't make it out of the cockpit; she isn't walking fearlessly through the forest. The tough Trudy Chacon I knew and loved perished in her heroic kamikaze mission, saving the Tree of Souls. She's never coming back.

I leaned forward, buried my face in my hands, and cried. I had been so concerned with the loss everyone else was feeling that I had mistakenly assumed I had come to terms with my own, and now it was hitting me like a truck.

I heard Neytiri sitting back down to my right. She held my shoulders as tears streamed down my cheek.

"All wounds are healed by time." She said. Close enough to the human saying. "This is your time to mourn your own loss, not to feel responsible for the loss of others." I nodded, a little surprised by the meaning conveyed by her words. She was about the equivalent of a nineteen to twenty-year-old young woman, but her wisdom and maturity far exceeded her years.

I felt Neytiri glance over my shoulder as I heard another set of footsteps approaching, then she give a small nod. Jake sat down beside me, and the three of us just sat there for most of the night, few words being exchanged.

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**This was definitely on the longer end of the spectrum, but I may be able to write another lengthy one like this again if I can find the right topic. If you want some more on the Norm-Trudy relationship (yes, it's in the screenplay) I highly recommend reading the fic "**I Bet You're Hard To Get Over" **by Eloracooper4. Also, I fudged the condition of Norm's Avatar for the sake of the story. In the screenplay it was shot point-blank by an AMP suit and would never have survived, but in the movie he was shot from a distance and had a chance of surviving.  
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**I had this one half done by the time I put up the Grace chapter, so it may take more time before I can put out a new chapter, seeing how I haven't started any of the other ones. As always, please Review! These oneshots are fueled by the reviews you, the readers, give me! I have 7 additional ideas in the works, so there is much for you all to gain by giving me any form of feedback!**


	4. Zero Bias

**I'm trying to make this chapter read differently from how I normally write. This chapter is in Neytiri's perspective and she thinks in Na'vi, so if you notice the writing seems sloppier, I did that on purpose. Ideally writing na'vi in english would mean literally deviating from proper English structure (subject-verb order, blah blah blah) but for your sake and my own I tried just altering my sentences.**

**I proofread this a couple of times, but I get the feeling it could have benefited from a few more. However, I also haven't given you guys a real chapter in around two weeks, so I took the hit with this one.  
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Zero Bias

Norm is a good person, and far more intelligent than most Omaticaya. He was not as foolish as Jake when he tried to assimilate: he knew Na'vi customs such as greetings and never filled in any gaps in his cultural understanding with human traditions. The worst Jake had ever done was the first time I brought him to my father, and the _skxawng_ tried to shake his hand! Such a foolish mistake had almost gotten him killed, and all he could respond with was that dumb look on his face. Norm never made those kinds of mistakes. But his science clouds his mind. He could learn a lifetime of lessons on the balance and Eywa quicker than everyone else, but he cares more of his 'sam-pulls' than the wisdom we have to offer.

I admit that I have made less effort to understand his view as he has of ours, but how can I respect the ways of one who treats life with such disrespect? He tears apart small life and puts them into these clear containers as if they were lesser than himself. He takes them away to do some terrible experiment to for some pointless reason, and the things he takes never come back.

I do like that it is he and not one of the others that has gotten close to us. We allowed those other dream walker scientists to stay, but they were not always accepted. They would come to our camp huddled together, their alien clothing covering up the beauty that is the Na'vi form.

Norm, on the other hand, had accepted the Omaticaya cloth. I think the humans have something similar, because I had heard Norm talking to Jake about it the first day he wore the loincloth:

_He and Jake were sitting by a tree one day and were just talking; idle banter that didn't seem to have any meaning that happened to float over to the cooking fire. "So, uh, Jake… how long does it take to get used to the man-thong?" Laughing followed, which left me a little confused and curious. "Just give it a few days and it'll grow on you. Besides, don't you want to show off those sexy legs?" Jake laughed, and although I wasn't looking I could tell Norm was blushing. Every time I asked about some of the words they used they would strain themselves not to laugh and change the subject._

These scientists, though! Their pants make the most irritating swishing noise as they moved and their bags look like deformities on their backs. It is not that we do not accept them, there is just a… tension, whenever they come. We sense that they need to think over their movements so as not to offend us, they barely make eye contact, and they tend not to greet those that pass by them. They are creatures out of their home, among an unfamiliar people. They did not make the effort that Norm has, and for that we prefer him.

It is for one of his science trips (They call them a difficult word: expedishuns) that we are moving through the woods. Jake had to give the morning hunting group his blessing, so it was just Norm and I walking through the woods so early in the day. It is another thing Norm is good at that Jake still has trouble with: he wakes up early like an Omaticaya. When the star brings daylight he arises, just as everyone except Jake. How do they get anything done on Earth if they waste precious time like this? It is another custom of sky people that I do not understand.

Here we are: me standing over a kneeling Norm, eyes seeing for trouble, bow at my side. There is a certain tree he wished to look at. There are plenty of trees all around, why did he need this one?

He had just scraped some moss with a very small hunting knife, even smaller than they normally would use. He had explained when I questioned him about this peculiar instrument that these were human-sized tools. They had run out of 'clean' knives made for a Na'vi, so these little tiny things were all they had left. 'Why do you need clean ones?' I had once asked. He talked of contamination. As if he was not the one contaminating the life he was destroying.

He stood up and took a very, very strange instrument from his bag. It was like a hunting knife handle, but where the blade would be was a large, skinny claw. He pulled down a leaf from the tree and clamped it between the pincers. The thing beeped and he removed it from the leaf, looked at the handle, then muttered something and wrote something else down.

Normally he is too busy doing his little experiments to notice my look of annoyance. It is something I never hid. Why should I? He knows I do not like this kind of activity, so why hide the expression I feel when he already knows I feel it?

Whether I like his work or not, the forest forgives. The holes he makes in trees heal over, the branches he cuts grow back, and the animals he captures are replaced by others. It is not the effects of his work, though, it is the process. He just swoops in, prods and injects things, and leaves just as quickly as he arrived. He is ungrateful to Eywa for allowing him to do his experiments, and for what reason? To know what something is made of? He already knows about what something does, why would he want any more?

"What is the point of this?" I finally asked. Ever since the sky people came here and began studying the forest we Omaticaya wondered why they were so obsessed with the little details of everything. I decided now would be as good a time as ever to ask.

"I'm sorry?"

"Why do all of this? This scraping and testing." I repeated. He wasn't the kind to respond with a 'what?' and look foolish. Even when confused his small responses seemed sophisticated, like he had much time to plan out how he would react to things.

He seemed almost relieved that someone finally asked him about this. It was as though he always wanted to explain himself yet did not feel in the position to do so. He gave a small nod of understanding and touched his forehead, only didn't include the customary 'I see you.' This gesture is a customary Na'vi introduction into a discussion. It means we are now on equal footing, and is tradition in peace talks and arguments.

"It's the only way to conduct these experiments." He responded.

"But why do the experiments?" I asked.

"To truly understand you need to realize what your presence on this moon means."

"It does not seem to mean anything to your people. You came here and tried to kill us."

"That… that's something I don't want to be tied to. For some of the humans this is just another place to go. But to others, like me, the discovery of life so sophisticated as the Na'vi is the most wonderful thing to have ever happened." Of course it is wonderful for him, we are his friends. How can it be bad to have met ones friends?

"We had learned so much about ourselves that we have nothing left to learn. There was simply nothing left. Biology had progressed as far as it possibly could confined to our own planet: we had figured out how every mechanism in nature works and even came up with improvements to some of them. To master biology truly meant you had reached the end of your field. And then, one day, we found this planet." He had paused.

"Now, there are entirely new avenues of life to study, to learn from-"

"This sounds like the beginning of the logic that brought the greedy sky people." I said accusingly. I couldn't help it; it felt like he was treating our planet like a stone that he was inspecting. "Your people run out of minerals on your own planet, so you come here to harvest ours. You run out of knowledge, so you come for more."

"Look, the Na'vi mean the world to me as a people, and Eywa as a deity, but the scientist in me still can't help but care about everything because of the scholarly opportunities. I've always had a huge need to learn, and this is the only chance anyone in this field will get of ever discovering new things."

Typical humans. "I don't understand why you humans always need more than you have."

"It's not about greed." He said as he ducked his head down sheepishly. He seemed to be putting down more steps than is needed to get to his point, and I grew more impatient. Now he was trying to skew the truth?

"Then it is about _what?"_ I said the last word with force, with the frustration I was feeling at his logic. His head snapped up.

"You know, back on Earth we aren't lucky enough to have an Eywa. Our God is either a mere idea at worst or an elusive trickster at best." Norm almost spat, which made me pull back a little. Apparently my frustrations were either contagious or mutual.

"A long time ago our religions stated that God has placed our planet at the center of everything. Well, we realized that our planet revolved around our star, and then we realized that our star went around in a galaxy, as did billions of other stars, including your own. Then we realized that our galaxy was one of billions of others. Our universe went from our small, geocentric little solar system to a place so large it was inconceivable. And God was nowhere to be found."

"I-"

"When we couldn't find him in the largest of spaces we looked for him on the smallest of scales. We learned precisely what makes up everything in existence. We discovered fantastic things that seem to spit in the face of logic, yet their existence is not only possible, but necessary. We learned about every force that acts on every piece of matter, we learned about what makes matter what it is, and then we learned what made _that_ substance the way it is. We broke down every single event in the Universe's history, filling countless books on what we have found in the process. Some of the greatest minds in our history have solved some of the greatest problems in existence. And in the end, we found no God."

"That is… very sad." I can't believe I am starting to feel bad for them. It is as if they were being tortured by an unreachable goal.

"One day we found this moon. For around two hundred years all we could ever reasonably hope for was to find a few creatures so small they couldn't be seen. Instead of finding them, we found a planet full of intelligent life. On top of that, the Na'vi have had what we have searched for the two greatest extremes imaginable. You have Eywa; God. Now, can you imagine being Tsu'Tey?" I gulped at the mention of his name. Tsu'Tey suffered a fate we view worse than death: his queue was cut off. He would no longer be able to form Tsahaylu with an Ikran, pa'li, a woman, or Eywa. He chose death over life without any of these, and my life mate took mercy on his spirit and granted his wish.

"You lost your religion?" I asked after reflecting on the point he was making.

"I was… disenchanted. I realized one day as a child that religion doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny."

"All of this is your way of finding God?"

"Our idea of God is like a person hidden behind countless walls. Eventually I got tired of tearing down walls only to find another one on the other side. Eywa, she isn't behind anything. I'm not tearing down walls so much as getting to know the person behind them."

"Why study these trees and not the ones at the Well of Souls?"

He furrowed his brow and looked me in the eyes, and I could see a glimmer of hope: "Is this an invitation?"

"You are becoming more Omaticaya than human, but you still have yet to be inducted into the tribe. Tradition parts for no one in the time of peace."

"Of course." He said before sighing. I think he had gotten his hopes up, and I feel bad about letting him down. But like I said, our tribe has privileges that are ours alone. "Aside from the fact that I'm not allowed into the Tree of Souls, it's also best to start learning about the most basic and working my way up. On the day I'm allowed to study the Well of Souls I'll be ready to make the most of my time."

"But why do you have to learn facts? Can you not just accept Eywa for what she is?"

"But what _is_ she? Do you truly know?" I responded with silence. "It is customary to greet people by saying 'I See you,' correct?" He said. He was clearly trying another approach. He's a very persistent person.

"You already know this is true."

"Well, how can you See someone you barely know? It carries an intimate connotation that doesn't seem appropriate for someone you have just met. I feel that way with Eywa. In order for me to See her I need to know her."

I gave a friendly smile and put my hand on his shoulder. "When the day comes for you to study Her I hope many will learn."

"Thank you." He responded. He began packing up his supplies and we headed back to the camp.

These human scientists are not as shallow as I had thought. Perhaps teaching one to See is a two-way process for all humans after all.

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**I know, this is my second chapter in a row involving Norm talking to Neytiri. I tried to mix it up making it from Neytiri's perspective, though. There's still another 2 chapters floating around that involve Norm which I'm going to put a hold on to get some different characters in. Also, I've noticed the way I wrap up a chapter seems shaky, so I would appreciate all input about that.  
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**Also, I just want to point out for anyone who noticed: yes, I got the 'sexy legs' thing from Eily Close's Avatar fic 'Hybrid' and I just wanted to throw that flash back in as a sort of comic relief. Hopefully this plug will make up for it! It is a really great story that I highly recommend for anyone who hasn't already started reading it. It's far better than what I've been writing so if you like this go read hers/his!**


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